


'til the future dares forget the past

by kitmarlowed



Category: Da Vinci's Demons, Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, and riario is always the sea, because the sun enticed icarus; the sea killed him, in which leo is icarus, this is the mythology au that i think every fandom has at one point
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-06
Updated: 2013-07-06
Packaged: 2017-12-17 22:04:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/872452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitmarlowed/pseuds/kitmarlowed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They do not learn and yet the elders mutter, pass wisdoms, say "take a lesson from Icarus", "learn from the mistakes of the gods"; and fate repeats and repeats.</p><p> till the Future dares<br/>       Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be<br/>An echo and a light unto eternity  - Adonais, Shelley</p>
            </blockquote>





	'til the future dares forget the past

**Author's Note:**

> this is Ramona's story, i just put the words in an order that sounded pretty

The best myths begin, as the best stories do, with a character, a _hero_ , who wants something. The best myths throw trials in the face of that hero, he defeats them all but generally, as the tragedians are wont, he loses something he loved.

Daedalus lost a son but gained his freedom, that’s what matters here.

Fate repeats her stories because people rarely listen, martyrs suffer on a different cultural cross each time but constantly they seek better things, greater things. They do not learn and yet the elders mutter, pass wisdoms, say "take a lesson from Icarus", "learn from the mistakes of the gods"; and fate repeats and repeats.

This is a story about fate, no more and no less.

-

The first time and there is a voice in his head that weaves words louder than the calls of his father, tells him ‘you are blessed Icarus,’ and that ‘the gods themselves favour you! fly to the sun, Icarus, and you will be a god among them.’

Icarus asks himself: what is the sun to a mortal who can fly?

The answer greets him from the waves.

The answer is ‘still hot enough to burn the wings of you who dared to fly’.

The moral is listen to your parents, the moral is do not cave to ambition, the moral is caution.

It doesn’t stick.

-

_fate can see the futures, pasts and presents on a multi-screened television, if Frankenstein’s the Modern Prometheus she will create the modern Icarus, drenched in water, the sum of his foolishness, but burning bright nonetheless_

-

The Greeks keep Icarus in the minds of the people and fate gives the soul a rest, holds it back from the vault of whatever heaven it might find, lets it sleep.

When pharaohs call themselves the stars and a god emerges in whispers that speak of a power to snuff out the sun, of human prophets bringing down the most ancient of regimes ( _man cannot fly, man cannot fly, man cannot_ ) she releases the soul.

 

Nineteen and he kills a man, takes the whip and reverses its power, the slave prays to the new god for forgiveness - the new god replies in the slave’s own voice, says ‘you do my work and free yourself, do my work still and free your brothers.’

Now, now, fate says to herself, you didn’t think Moses was the first, did you? The history books are for the winners, Moses triumphed afterall, it is written in Icarus’ blood that he can never, never, win.

The slave raises his voice above the crowd, says: ‘we are all equal why do you enslave us? can we not stand in the sun?’

and a voice, a voice with a knife at the slave’s throat says ‘no, child, you will get burnt.’

The second Icarus dies in the sands of Egypt, a new god on his lips and eyes glazed, he faces the sun, he could not reach it.

-

Slavery, it seems, puts the notion of hope in hearts like nothing other. (later fate will laugh, ‘what we do in life, echoes in eternity’ and she watches her work again, spots differences)

 

When he opens his eyes he's a slave again, just as he was yesterday, tells himself to stop believing in the dreams that tell him he can fly. He is a man without a name, with a mind too focused on the universe to give himself one. God created the universe, the new religion says, and god has no name but god, so he may have no name too, just the number they paint on his skin and the broken armour they throw and call his. He hears the lions roar, the screams of men on crosses being torn at, the jeers and shouts of the crowd.

 

When he lies on the floor, blood filling his throat, his mouth and he’s drowning and it hurts and he prays, he can remember. He remembers the soldier, a man with dark hair and dark eyes, who told him to die with grace, that it was not worth it to repeat his claims that martyrdom brings him closer to god, tells him to fight the lions, to fight his fellow men and maybe he’ll live.

But the light glinted in the gold laurel crown and pride flooded deep in his veins, he had stood in the center of that great building, the sun in his eyes, sand at his feet, and held the broken sword up high.

He hadn’t the chance to speak, the words bubble uselessly around the arrow that pierces his neck.

The dark haired soldier looks at him, crossbow at his side, and there’s pity in those black eyes.

Sand burns his skin, blazed from the sun, blood drowns him like water.

_the lesson goes unlearned again and the sea, the sea does not weep for Icarus_

-

 

In Byzantium, fate allows her _icarus_ to preach destruction, to enjoy perfecting and shaping Greek Fire, liquid fire, ὑγρὸν πῦρ, to allow the Byzantines a defence against their enemies, against the heathens marching on them.

In Byzantium her Icarus burns himself to death.

-

She names him Leonardo, makes him a bastard and a genius, makes him proud and stubborn. Intellect that soars above without the aid of wax and feather wings; she gives him an obsession with flight.

His heart hangs heavy with the burden of his mind, the fact that war, always the handmaiden of progress, is to be his key to a greater living, a greater audience, stains the back of his eyes with blood that he can’t get out. He is a motherless son, he is weighed down by his own blood. As he designs canons, mechanical war-machines, metal birds with wings attainable for humanity soar over his head. As he fights religion with logic, dark shadows crawl ever closer.

_fate will not love this bastard boy_

The sea is at his heels in Florence, he follows it to Rome, it follows him back and forth. He searches for knowledge, led by a Turk, a Mithraic Mystery, is an initiate.

The sea is a man, too, with the dark hair and eyes of the soldier in Rome and what happens next is not fate’s doing - her creation gains the will to deviate. Fate stills her hand and waits.

They touch first in a lopsided anger, his displeasure ripples under a black, black gaze. They touch second in a burning, fiery, destructive clash of wills and morals and _teeth._

They touch next in anger turned on its head, a war where the victory is pyrrhic, the loss is control. With hands roaming, and skin bitten, bruised, and worshipped, they remember.

A part of her, the part that is kind to children who fall and scrape their knees, the part that shows them that their fate is to _not_ repeat, decides that it must be harder for the sea to remember its lives than for her _icarus_. She sees the sea, the man, his name Riario, she sees him falter, sees him trace the arc of invisible ghost arrows through the sky to Leonardo’s neck, sees him watch and feel the other drowning in him, sees him pull the knife back from the edge.

Her Icarus blinks back tears, blinks back betrayal from his own eyes, looks at the sea like a man dying of thirst and nods, says, “this is the way it is meant to be,” and the sea, _Riario_ , shakes his head, “no.”

The sea cries out for Icarus, Riario curses Leonardo, and is this not the same thing?

_fate lets them play out their deviation, lets icarus live and the sea die, stabbed, apart, and thinks that maybe this is justice, her old friend, that as they loved they lost_

-

They keep remembering and so fate installs a backup plan, a catch, that when they love and remember, even then, they still will play their roles.

They keep the names, Leo and Riario, the latter a name passed down to every incarnation of the sea, fate doesn’t pretend to understand the universe’s ways of fighting back at her, she won’t allow that she’s playing games above her role.

-

At the arrêt de Mérindol his voice is the loudest and he speaks of such things, such great mysteries, such change, portents of the future, of longer lives, of flying men.

They call him the lion of progress from within their safe walls, and the sea listens, watches this boy grow in the presence of a stifling faith.

The Catholics send Riario first, the needles to pierce the skin of Merindol, the poison to flow through their veins. He writes letters, coded, whenever he can, ration levels, plans of defence, and one day the lion finds him.

With a sword at his throat the sea begs and does not remember, with a sword at his throat the sea calculates a way to tip the balance, to have the sword himself.

Leonardo of Icaria, a title he keeps to himself, stays his blade and pulls the man, his downfall, up, says, “is this your God’s will? to lie and steal and murder innocents in sanctuary?”

Riario stands tall, looks into his eyes and says, “is it yours?”

he grabs the blade

“is your voice, so loud, the voice of God?”

breaks skin

“does your heresy know no bounds even within your religion of rebels?”

It’s a baptism of blood and Merindol falls. Icarus lies dead again, surrounded by ambition and failed ideas.

_this is the last time they live lives apart from who they are_

-

fate skips centuries, allows her tortured souls a rest and throws them back to a world that lives on a phrase for a faction: vive la revolution, vs the old ways are the best

They meet in England, because it is safe for both of them, because what they are is not known and while Leo weaves his words around enlightenment, Riario smirks in corners devoid of light, and smokes, makes shapes of guns and swords.

They fuck because they’re foreigners in London and because the tides are turning, they fuck because they live in a changing world and because they can.

(They remember and wish they hadn’t)

“Who are you this time, then,” he whispers, “to bring me down?”

Riario shows his royalist colours, bares his teeth, saying nothing.

They leave each other and cross the sea at different points, raise their voices for their separate causes on days apart.

In the storming of the Bastille the boy Icarus dies, shot through the neck, drowns again and he should have seen this but the example cannot learn from itself.

Riario shakes himself, tells himself that this was duty, that this was fate.

Fate doesn’t smile this day.

-

At the Battle of Charleroi the French sit and stand and fight and die together. For freedom, for the people, for the world and Icarus, and Leonardo, makes no discoveries, has only the pride of military man happy in his skill.

His weapons are nothing against theirs and oh, okay then, in this time they never meet. Faceless men behind and infront of a gun.

Fate hangs her head, they fight for the wrong reasons.

-  
Avoiding wars they find depression in America, fate stands on the sidelines and pushes. She breathes the words that Leonardo speaks. It’s a family on family thing and Leo wants it over (the icarus here is that, he wants peace, and that’s above human comprehension here), she sees the Romeo and Juliet before it happens.

She lets them have a month, because they deserve it, because they need it, before they remember.

 

On the bridge their voice mingle in the wind, disguises crumble but no one sees it, his hands white knuckled gripping bars of safety; he is on the wrong side.

“Who says you’ll kill me, man?” shouts Leo, “precedents and rules are made to be broken, challenged, don’t do this.”

 

Fate thinks that she often underestimates people, she knows it when the lug wrench clatters on the floor, and the blood starts dripping.

When Riario curls up next to the body, when sobs tear through him and he apologises over and over and over, and he tries to breathe life back into dead lungs, to take his actions back, fate does not cry.

She does not mourn.

 

(but she _does_ )

-

They are spies in World War II, or at least her icarus is, an Englishman in France (fate will smile on Tarantino, but she will not forget the truth).

His game is seduction outright, this time, he weaves his way into people’s hearts, their beds and it doesn’t matter what gender they are - it’s what they know that matters - and when he sees the dark eyes, dark hair, rich voice and victorious smirk he hopes that this guy’s important. The ruthless streak is new.

 

The memories do not flood in, they are gradual, it starts with flecks of light over an ocean, the feel of air whistling through feathers. A drop that feels like a wound, drowning, floating, dying, and he feels it again and again.

Capt. Riario sees images of death, his eyes run red with blood, and sand and tears and the world drowns Icarus over and over and he’s always there and it hurts.

They guide each other through emotional and muscle memory, memories that are so very theirs, a shared history of death and life and sunlight; Leo looks at a blank space on the wall and whispers in English, “last time you tried to kill yourself,” takes Riario’s hand and holds it, “we’ve never really addressed it before.”

And Riario says, “I -”

“Don’t say it, we both know it’s true, but we also know what has to happen, please don’t break my heart before you stop it.”

“I love you,” Riario doesn’t say because Leo is right.

(You broke my heart millennia ago, they both do not say. Their stony silence, their resignation, burns at the heart of this.)

 

When the shot comes Leo smiles and looks to the heavens, looks fate in the eye and breathes his last.

 

&

 

He sits on the front step of someone else’s house and drinks, because that’s what people do when they’re alone at parties, when drinking lost it’s social meaning when the sun went down. He drinks and drinks and if people on their way out stop and laugh at him he says nothing, stares into middle distance.

Were he younger, more full of idle days and easy pleasures, he would draw them, the lovers leaving early bound for homes or for motel rooms; he has no paper with him, no desire to make or even break things. A numbness born of broken dreams seeps through him and he sighs as the hand takes the cup away and sets it down with a small laugh and a, “no doubt you’ve heard it all before,” and Leo turns, asks, “what?”

“That you’ll kill yourself with drink one day, or that you're wasting your life,” the other man laughs, continues, “alcoholism is a leading cause of death or illness you know.”

“Life,” says Leo, “is a leading cause of death or illness,” and he throws up to the side dimly aware of the hand soothing on the back of his neck and the nothings murmured into the night.

“Are you okay?” is the question when he’s done, a couple of dry heaves and coughs and fuck if he isn’t killing himself, he says, “no,” and adds, “most days I don’t feel alive.”

The other man frowns, “Maybe you just need something to live for,” smiles, says, “I’m Riario, by the way.”

Leo replies with his name, coughs, says, “don’t you have something better to be doing with your life than sitting on doorsteps with alcoholic losers?”

“You aren’t a loser,” says Riario, “and no, not really, I’m a med student.”

Leo groans, not all from the pounding in his head and the pain in his chest, mutters, “I quit med school,” after that he can’t remember much.

 

He wakes up in a hospital room and it’s salt in the wounds, he says nothing to the friends who look at him like they don’t know who he is but smile anyway.

He sees himself in every harried doctor walking by his window, in very tired looking nurse that tries to talk to him.

“You aren’t dying,” says the voice from what he thinks is last night, and Riario smiles at him from the chair. “But at this point it quite honestly is stop drinking or die,” and Leo doesn’t say ‘you are all I ever wanted to be’, opts for a nod and a shrug.

The warm fingers that wrap around his surprise him, as do the words that Riario says: “find a new dream, Leonardo, nothing is worth this.”  
He falls asleep to spite him.

 

At home, the box flat paid for out of uni savings, he takes to painting again. Drags dark lines over canvases and screams when nothing looks the way it should.

He cannot drink, he spent his last on paints and paper, threw the existing bottles out, he shouts again.

There's a shadow in every painting that tells him to find a new dream and fuck you he’s trying, can’t you see that? This is what drove him to drink in the first place, he’s flying so close to perfection that when his fingers graze the sides he falls down hard.

He picks himself up from the floor and takes a pencil, carves a face into blank white and starts to paint dark eyes and dark hair and a light in the background like the sun, because this man taunts him. The unattainable heart of what could easily be, he fails - but starts again.

 

Leo brings someone new home every night and they’re never who he wants, that figure skirting his memory and his paintings. The people, men or women, share dark hair and brown eyes, he can’t get those eyes right, though. It’s never the same.

 

When he finds Riario again, at a party with (of all things) a bottle of coke in his hand and Leo hasn’t had a proper drink in weeks, he’s proud, he takes him home.

“I know you,” Leo says, and Riario laughs, says, “of course you do,” and kisses him softly, deeply and the stars Leo sees are memories of how it felt to fly, to be on top of the world, to know things other didn’t, the pain is locked and bolted deep within. He breaks the kiss, rests his head on Riario’s shoulder, “this time was different,” he says, “I think i knew from the beginning.”

“This time it won’t end the same way,” and it’s a promise, a prayer and a hymn all in one and Leo laughs, says, “no, it won’t.”

 

 _somewhere fate closes a book, puts down a pen, stops thinking about them_.

 

They die together, at the last, and it’s good because it’s them and it’s completely unrelated to any death they’ve had before.  
That’s the happiest ending we can have, really, isn’t it?

_fin_

**Author's Note:**

> history repeats itself because no one listens


End file.
